Text 10948, 103 rader
Skriven 2014-03-15 17:03:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: malaysia 330
====================
An extensive breakfast buffet was included either in the
rate or in my gold benefits, not sure which.

Hot meats were that funny mixture of breakfast food and
dinner food that you get in Asian places. I am of course
thankful for this custom, because I don't care for most
breakfast foods.

They were mostly pretty average. Sliced grilled beef
tenderloin was lukewarm, medium to medium-well, strewn
with too much rosemary. Crispy bacon was less than crispy,
but that is fine with me. There was "beef sausage" that
tasted like chicken bratwurst to me. Lilli reports that
her omelet was expertly made.

My eyes lit up when I saw a couple piles of bamboo steamers
(generally a good sign). These turned out to house some of
the worst versions of dim sum that I've ever encountered -
think freezer-burned Trader Joe's. Oh, was I entoisht.

This fiasco was redeemed by a large selection of excellent
baked goods of the Europastry sort, rivalling the best
spreads of, oh, what comes to mind, the Conrad Brussels.

Juices on offer were tomato, pineapple, orange, red apple,
and watermelon, but there were also dragonfruit, carrot,
green apple, and another couple things available to
be squeezed on request.

A cold cut table could just as well have been called the old
cut table, including ordinary salamis with a bit of a hard
edge and ham that had turned. Contrast this with some very
nice smoked salmon.

One could eat well, and I did, mostly on salmon.

The shuttle back to the airport was a full-size bus. It
took us there in the company of a veritable United Nations
of the comfortable and respectable, and we were back in the
good hands of United in short order.

The boarding pass machines scanned us and spat out our
documents without hitch, except for me there was an
additional paper that read "Please see a United Airlines
airport representative for an important message" - uh oh,
said I.

Long security lines, but they moved fairly fast.
==

UA 862 HKG SFO 1230 0815 744 8CD

We had time for an e-mail and relax session at the Royal
Orchid, whose food I prefer to the United Club. The desk
agent apologetically informed us that there would be no
departure announcement for our flight but welcomed us in
graciously under that caveat.

Immediately I went to the bar and poured myself a generous
slug of Baron Otard VSOP, which was spicy and harsh in the
blended-for-the-Asian-trade style.

There were some interesting stir-fries on the steam table,
but I wasn't tempted owing to having recently had breakfast,
but I did try some rather ordinary dim sums that actually
did taste sort of like dim sum, props to that.

Magnum and other ice creams in interesting flavors, such as
green tea and red bean, as well as some peculiar Asian
desserts, such as a sago pudding that I enjoy but gives the
heebie-jeebies to my white folk friends.

At some point I left Lilli and toddled down the hall to the
United Club to see about that important message.

There was no UA representative, just some airport staff with
limited if any discretion, who seemed to think I was
lobbying for an upgrade; of course, the reality was that I
was afraid of being given an upgrade without Lilli (which
apparently turned out to be the case).

Returned to the Royal Orchid, had one last taste of Cognac,
gathered up Lilli, and headed to the gate, where I handed
them the notice and rather pointedly said I liked my seat
and more particularly my seatmate. The agent tapped away
furiously at the computer and then said in that peculiar
face-saving way that the message was that I was one of
United's best fliers and was soon going to celebrate 20
years as a Mileage Plus elite and reach 2 million miles
flown. Oh, okay.

We boarded up a bit late, hoping they would find Lilli a
seat up front as well, but no luck.

They had given us backward-facing seats by the lav, which
I turned into a sort of virtue by taking a large dose of
Lasix, something that I'd recently been neglecting to the
detriment of a favorite pair of shoes that had popped from
the strain of the edema.

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